A five-story, 126,000-square-foot Ronald McDonald House has opened its doors in North Druid Hills, sitting directly beside Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Arthur M. Blank Hospital and giving families of sick and injured children a free place to stay steps from their kids' bedsides. The $90 million project includes 110 guest rooms, 18 specialized transplant suites, and a five-story indoor playscape that organizers describe as the heart of the house.
According to Urbanize Atlanta, the building was designed by Perkins&Will and took inspiration from treehouses, cardboard forts, and backyard adventures, with project officials describing the design approach as seeing the world through the eyes of a child. The outlet reports the facility includes numerous community spaces along with an onsite dining section staffed by two full-time chefs. Ronald McDonald House Atlanta, formerly known as Atlanta Ronald McDonald House Charities, has operated in the city for more than 45 years, helping families with sick and injured children find lodging near hospital care.
The new building replaced the charity's former Gatewood House near Emory University on Briarcliff Road, which was sold back to Emory to be repurposed as graduate housing, according to 11Alive. The nonprofit continues to operate a separate facility near Scottish Rite Hospital in Sandy Springs. Per Urbanize Atlanta, the North Druid Hills location opened in late 2025, and per agency officials, the organization had been experiencing rapidly growing regional need for such a facility.
A Building That Grew Faster Than Planned
The scale of that need reshaped the project mid-construction. While initial 2023 plans called for a 70-room facility, rapidly accelerating regional demand forced organizers to build Phase 2's full 110-room layout roughly 15 years ahead of schedule, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's reporting cited in the research record. President and CEO Tracey Atwater noted that the smaller Phase 1 building would have been full upon opening.
That surge shows up in the numbers. The organization served more than 3,000 families in 2023, per Urbanize Atlanta, while the same period saw a 69% increase in family stays between 2022 and 2025 that the expanded 110-room facility was built to address. Ronald McDonald House Atlanta says it provided more than 25,000 nights of rest in 2023 alone, and the new house expands its overall capacity to serve families by 75%.
Free Lodging Saves Families Millions
By covering lodging, meals, and transportation at no cost, the organization saved families $8.4 million in out-of-pocket expenses in 2023, a figure that climbed toward $10 million the following year as demand kept rising. Those savings matter for families who might otherwise face hotel bills and gas money on top of a child's medical crisis, since the charity's guest rooms and support services remain free throughout a family's stay.
Transplant Suites Break the Distance Rule
Most guest rooms are reserved for families who live more than 50 miles from the hospital, but the building's 18 transplant suites work differently. Those rooms are designed for families of children who are immunocompromised after transplants, and they waive the distance requirement so local kids can recover within 15 miles of the hospital during the high-risk post-transplant period, allowing them to stay close to specialists without the infection risks of frequent travel.
Built Around Play, Not Just Recovery
The five-story indoor playscape anchors the building's design, described by Urbanize Atlanta as the heart of the house alongside numerous other community spaces scattered throughout the five floors. The building's engineered, fully vegetated modular green roofs were designed by Perkins&Will and installed by LiveRoof and Horizon Roofscapes specifically to endure Georgia's climate without soil compaction, prioritizing long-term plant survival over cheaper alternatives.
The facility sits on the campus of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Arthur M. Blank Hospital, which Urbanize Atlanta describes as the largest development of its kind in Georgia history. Hoodline previously covered the mass patient transfer to that hospital, and the co-location marks the first time in the Southeast that a Ronald McDonald House has been built directly on a hospital campus. Development firm SK Project Consulting managed the project's planning for more than seven years beginning in 2018, with general contractor Brasfield & Gorrie handling construction after a December 2023 groundbreaking at North Druid Hills Road and I-85.
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